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Monday, October 14, 2013

Do
you remember one of my older reviews about ‘Which? Right Choice’ magazine? It
was quite an unusual kind of magazine to help consumers to make buying decision
by providing them purely editorial perspective and unbiased verdicts on variety
of consumer products and services. The USP of WRC is that they don’t accept any
single advertisement or advertorial or sponsored feature (not even for the
covers) to put in the magazine to ensure its positioning in readers mind that
this magazine is absolutely editorial driven, not the advertisements.

Now
‘Times What’s Up?!’ is recently launched magazine by Times Of India group which
is also in the same genre but interestingly it is just opposite to WRC in terms
of content. TWU is merely a compilation of advertorials and promotional
features except of very editorial articles. A very unique proposition and
solves fairly its purpose to help consumers to in buying.

CONTENT
It is also mentioned in the TWU’s tag line that it focuses on consumer
durables, IT and ITES segment. It contains all the advertorials and promotional
features in the form of editorial pages. For a (consumer) reader, it serves its
good purpose as it helps him to know about the product, the technology, the
concept, the usage, the application of any featured product.

But
the catch in this kind of content is that readers cannot absolutely rely on such
information to make a firm decision to buy a product because most of the articles
have no specialist or editorial credibility, they are just advertorial pieces
from the companies’ mouth.

Content
of magazine is well structured in various sections and articles are written in
very short and crisp manner. The cover story only goes up to 4 pages; else
every story is wrapped up in one or two pages maximum. Despite that, articles
are structured and have several extra info boxes and hooks that make the
magazine a content-thick and interesting read.

DESIGN
After a long time I have gone through a magazine which has a good design in
terms of creativity and discipline. As it was necessary for this kind of genre,
it has got lots of design elements in the magazine. Every page has some fix and
variable elements but everything seems placed thoughtfully and in the
discipline. Hence, entire magazine when you flip through cover to cover, it
looks beautiful and create interest to read it.

Cover,
I feel, is little cluttered and not impressive for this genre of magazines
which can be tweaked further. Also, for some reason, the launch issue was carrying
‘What’s Up’ as its masthead but second issue has ‘Times What’s Up?!’.

Inside
pages are designed pretty well as they have consistency in using elements yet
creative. Except a few places where things are placed or treated inconsistently,
otherwise all the pages look good.

PRINTINGAs
most of the content is promotional features and are sponsored material, it could
be justified only if they were printed well. In order to achieve this it is
taken care brilliantly and printing is come up very impressive. Images are
perfectly sharp, clear and skin colors are just perfect. It has got detailing
in almost every photograph so all I can say that pre-press and press has done
their job well.

PRODUCT
Again, since it has lots of sponsored material, to make it look better, it has
got good quality of thick paper for inside pages and even thicker page for the
cover which is then laminated to give it a richer look. Monthly issue of 52
pages is priced at Rs50 which if you look at its product quality and the
reasonably good content, it seems pretty fine. Even it has made of higher GSM paper,
but it has 48 pages only plus 4 pages of cover, that is not sufficient enough
to make it as a perfect bound magazine with a spine, hence it is centre-pinned
product which does not feel bad in slightly tall in size. Because of condense
presentation, it looks quite content heavy but it should have more pages to
accommodate more articles to feed a reader as a monthly periodical.

As
I mentioned, it is a special and probably the first of its kind of magazine.
But, I liked because it is put together well.

You
might feel that my review of TWU is also paid or sponsored but trust me, I have
never taken a single penny for my reviews in last seven years and I promise
that my ‘VIRDI’ct will never be sold for any amount. That is why I can write my
unbiased feedback on the publication which is helpful for the publishers to
improve their magazines.

Critical editoral analysis of Aha Zindagi- A life style magazine in Hindi

Site redesign for naukriguru.com

Your Appreciation Matters

“…your name should be MAGAZINE SINGH ‘VIRDI’CT”

COLLEAGUES, FRIENDS, ALL THE WELL WISHERS.

“Nice work Virdi, I really like and follow it regularly. In fact I bought the issue of Lonely Planet Magazine after reading your review only.”

SAI, Dy. Managing Director, ITP Publishing India.

"Interesting. Thks

…Very useful stuff. Thks....Splendid work. And a good way to communicate the message to the team....Very interesting observations for making magazines even better!

…Good one. pl also see latest pc world and do an analysis quickly.

…Good Reviews Virdi. Keep contributing.”

KRISHNA TEWARI, GM, SIPD, Infomedia India Ltd.

“Dear Virdi sir, it is a wonderful thing you have done to give a detailed review of new magazines. It is a very good learning platform for people in the business of communication.”

G.V. SREEKUMAR, Associate Professor, IIT Bombay

“Wonderful Virdi sir, I hope the concerned magazine publishers also read these reviews…”

AMRITA GANGULY SALIAN, Editor, Disney Adventures.

“Really good job... it was worth reading :)"

RAJAT SAHU, Head Global Marketing, Microworld.

“Hi Virdi, I enjoy reading all your anecdotes. It is extremely useful to me. We are launching InformationWeek print edition in April. Looking forward to your valuable feedback on InformationWeek. As always, I value your inputs.

…Virdi has a lot of knowledge and experience in the publishing space.”

BRIAN PEREIRA, Exec. Editor, Informationweek India, UBM Group.

“Brilliant! Thanks so much for keeping me in mailing list. Awaiting the 10 page post mortem of Forbes India. Do send soon.”

DEEPAK AJWANI, Director Online, Forbes India, Network18.

“Absolutely correct Virdi, you are in sink with the current scenario, unfortunately some of the Editors and management are still in the Dinosaur era and will not change. Sad for they will become extinct or the will make the product defunct. Keep writing and posting.

...Thanks pal very interesting… Awaiting your view on Forbes. Well you seem to be now getting a lot of page views on Linkedin as a lot of my friends read your postings.”

“Virdi, now we need the 'VIRDI'CT on the Indian edition of Stuff. Their issue is just out.”

DEEPAK DHINGRA, Editor, T3 India.

“Really detailed & nice review - it is always a pleasure to read your words - thank for sharing. I will definitely look at the design perspectives you are pointing out. Humm... after reading your review, I think I need a serious re-look on the design once again!”

JAYAN NARAYANAN, Sr. Creative Director, 9dot9 Media Pvt. Ltd.

“Thanks for the review! Could you give me some specifics on what you thought was wrong with the cover? Any other bits we could improve?”

“Welcome to the Editgroup!! And surely you jest when you say that that you wouldn't dare teach us anything--you have more experience in the editorial process than most people in the industry!

Friends, Virdi has had years of editorial experience in a very special area of publishing--that of formulating special interest titles in our national language, thereby resulting in far wider reach to our audiences across the nation. I've had the opportunity to work with him in a previous assignment and am confident that he will work his magic here at Infomedia as well. Believe me, there's plenty to be learnt from him in editorial process, brand positioning and content structure--if there's an intelligent Sardar, Virdi is the one! ;-)”

...Virdi, Can you pull out a few magazines and see what's the best practice? Let's then standardise this for all our magazines.

Virdi + Team Overdrive! Well done. All credit to you!...Thanks. Glad you liked it. Whats the virdict on the Careers360 mag? Keen to see your review!”

PRAKASH IYER, Managing Director, Infomedia India Limited.

“I recently came across your blog and have been reading along. I thought I would leave my first comment. I dont know what to say except that I have enjoyed reading. Nice blog. I will keep visiting this blog very often.”

MARGARET LE VAN DOMINGUEZ, Artist and Designer.

“Great job sirji...”

KAUSHIK CHAKRAVORTY, Freelance Photographer.

“Virdi Sir, it was interesting to read your analysis, I did visit your site sometime back, great work…”

…You can do me one favor, can you evaluate JCK (a very honest appraisal) in a similar fashion and show me your ranking?

...I can see huge amount of efforts in this. The presentation made perfect sense to me. I believe we at Reed have a lot to learn from this presentation :-)”

SURESH RAMAKRISHNAN, Head, Reed-Infomedia.

“I really admire how well you review each magazine. Why don’t you do that with our in-house magazines as well? Each team will really benefit from your evaluation. Me and Deepak would love if you could do an analysis of T3 whenever you’ve got free time.”

TRUPTI GHAG, Feature Editor, T3, Infomedia18 Ltd.

“I'm a regular reader of your blog. And basically wanted to send across the magazine I work for, it's called platform. we're a contemporary arts bi-monthly magazine. This is our 5th year in circulation, and it would be wonderful to hear your thoughts on the same.”

Disclaimer

All the postings on this blog are my personal and unofficial opinions and views whichshould not be used as an evidence or official statement for any businesspurpose. My rating system has got nothing to do with ABC or IRS or any other survey or reports.